Breaking Kayfabe: Pro Wrestling, Masculine Performativity and the Narrativized Self

My research focusses on the pro wrestling concept of kayfabe and explores its application in Post-Truth discourses of identity. I argue that this once niche form of the suspension of disbelief based on emotion rather than fact is now crucial to understanding how truth-claims are negotiated in an age of identity politics where populist narratives are increasingly based on alternative facts and virtue- signalling, while identities are determined by performance rather than essence. My creative work narrativizes my experiences as a pro wrestler and functions as a dramaturgical study of pro wrestling, a metafiction of my own identity narrative and reveals the autobiographical pact to be itself a form of kayfabe. In my critical work I situate my research within narrative theories of identity, counter- essentialist identity politics and theories of gender performativity.